The New Year's Eskimo Dance.  This video was taken early in the evening.  Not many of the townspeople were there yet.   Later in the night the hall will be packed.  This is the end of one dance/song.  My battery ran out so this was all I got.  You may notice only women stand up and dance  If men dance they kneel on the mats up front.   The dancers always wear gloves or hold onto home made dance fans of feathers and beads.  This is to keep evil spirits from entering the dancer's body while they are dancing.  Only men play the drums. 

So New Years Eve came and went in the village.  The festivities started with an Eskimo dance in the community center.  Then at midnight there was a fireworks show that lasted 15 minutes.  Normally the fire works are set off in a wide part of the river just to the west of my house.  This year that wasn’t possible.  We had two days of above freezing weather and although the ice is still over a foot and a half thick with no danger of falling through there was too much standing water to make setting the fireworks off there a good idea.  Instead they were lit from an area behind the town between the post office and the waste-water field. 

            For the rest of the night and into the morning the drunks were out in force.  I could hear shouts and yelling and the occasional celebratory shots fired outside until late in the morning.  Yes, this is a dry village but drinking still goes on.  Sometimes people get angry when they have been drinking and sometimes that anger is directed towards outsiders.  That’s why I stayed in my house this New Years Eve.  I think all of us teachers here did.  There’s no use stirring up trouble if you don’t have to.